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What Does Art Look Like?

Ansel Adams, a piano prodigy before he picked up a camera, once declared that the photographic negative was like a musical "score," while the final print was akin to the concert "performance."

This much-quoted simile, a reminder from a master teacher to respect every step of the photographic process, expressed an attitude that was old-fashioned by the 1960s and is even more so now in the digital era. As Adams was...